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I was thinking along these lines when I went to something
called “See America,” which is a good idea to promote tourism. To
America, I mean, but you could have a “See Ibiza” thing and it would
attract the same hundreds of conmen and women looking for a free holiday, too.
We all turn up at a hotel in London and there are all
the people we need to see who can offer flights and hotels and things like that
to help you breathe more easily. I settled on Texas (they
gave me their press release in a travel bag, with pen) and New York (the girl
seemed to like me). That means I shrugged off Missouri and Nevada and New Mexico
and something called the Florida Coast Spaceman Experience (you get to have lunch
with a former astronaut). I like going to America because
you can order half a sandwich. Anyway, as they are taking over the world we ought
to join them. I see there’s a man attempting to get in the Guinness Book
of Records by visiting every Starbucks there is. He’ll have to be quick.
I think he should get a life first. Going to London is
like going to any capital city and just as exciting until you get there and find
it’s full of tourists. I really did want to go to
the Lucian Freud exhibition at Tate Britain (the galleries have different names
now, but I guess they’re all still named after either the sugar people or
Sainsbury’s) and I’m so glad I made it because it was fabulous. His
paintings are of people’s bodies, really, rather than their souls. It was
a bit like a trip to a mortuary, but very revealing nonetheless. On
the tube to Pimlico, I wished I had a camera for the shot of the multi-racial
line of people opposite. There were tourists, tourists
everywhere and none of them seemed to have had a drink. I
went in the first London pub I’ve ever visited where the gents was on the
ground floor and had a very good espresso while I watched Korea go out of the
World Cup and talked to a young Australian backpacker. He had been to the Tate
around the corner, but couldn’t afford the tenner to see the Freud bit, he
said. I wondered why he didn’t do what I did and just say you were from the
Press. I suppose everybody can’t do that or it would be like the Visit America
thing. Then it was home again. I got back at Midnight and
slept for twelve hours. I’m sure I used to be able
to go to London for the day without having to sleep it off for the rest of the
week. Mind you, that’s also true about a bottle of Scotch.
Sinclair
Newton
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